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Secret Files: Tunguska28-01-2007
It has been a long time since I last played a graphics adventure game with a point and click interface. I can recall many happy memories playing such games as Beneath a Steel Sky, Universe, Monkey Island, Flight of the Amazon Queen and Simon the Sorcerer on my Commodore Amiga. That was some years ago now and point and click adventures have been thin on the ground since then. A few have appeared on the bestseller lists in recent years such as the Broken Sword series, but not enough to start a revival. So I was fairly surprised to see the point and click adventure game Secret Files : Tunguska being promoted on Amazon with some fairly decent buyer reviews The Game The storyline is based around an event that actually happened in the Tunguska region of Siberia in 1908. A mysterious explosion occurred believed to of been caused by a falling asteroid or comet. In the game, the main character, Nina Kalenkow, is searching for her missing father, a scientist who was part of the original team investigating the Tunguska event many years after the disaster. Clues left behind in her fathers office at the local museum lead Nina to believe he has been kidnapped by a secret organisation that wants to get its hands on her fathers research. The game features many beautiful locations of a higher quality than I have seen in past graphic adventure games. Also, the characters are very similar to game characters you would expect in a FPS game rather than a graphics adventure game. They resize as they move towards you or away and have a more fluid motion when walking or interacting with objects. This makes for a far better game experience than say Westwood's Bladerunner. The game utilises the standard point and click engine that everyone knows and loves. As you change room or location you can investigate the area and pick up objects which are shown at the bottom of the screen in your inventory. These objects can be combined with other objects in your inventory or used with objects in your environment to make a new object or to perform an action. Objects can be very small so make sure you thoroughly investigate the scene. As you solve the puzzles and progress through the game, the game takes on a more.. adult humour. The jokes can become a little bit.. naughty. As Nina interacts with characters her automated replies can get somewhat fruity. For instance, when talking to a street worker who wishes to win the lottery, he says about doing nothing but fishing if he wins: "There's nothing like going to a quiet place with rod in hand". Nina's reply: "Sounds like my ex-boyfriend". The game employs computer animations to connect one location to another. So as you complete one game area the game switches to movie mode and shows your character progressing from one place to the next. One scene borrows heavily from Tomb Raider as our heroine jumps into a jeep and speeds off, bullets ricocheting off the bodywork. A chase ensues, the jeep goes over a cliff, and Nina is rescued at the last minute by a low flying plane. Indiana Jones eat your heart out. One interesting feature of Secret Files is that you actually get to play two characters. Nina meets Max, a friend of her fathers who offers to help. During the game you get to play Max when Nina is captured by the bad guys. Later, you can switch between both characters to solve two parts of a puzzle in parallel, working together passing items between Max and Nina. I played the game every evening after work for four nights until I completed it. It was well worth every penny I paid for it and I was happy to learn that the developers are working on a sequel. Check out the trailer. This is my current recommended game for any serious graphics adventurer. Check out the official web site to get a feel for the quality of the in-game graphics and download the demo to try before you buy. Amazon were doing a special deal on the price last time I looked so check that out too. Plus the official web site also offers a software update that gives you additional features and an alternative ending. Happy adventuring!
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attached. The screenshots looked pretty good, but I needed to confirm that the game would run on my 3 year old laptop before parting with any money. After a quick Google I found the Home
